THE MOCKI^^G-BIRD. 
Ill 
The nest is composed of small twigs and roots carelessly put 
together, and not high above the ground ; the eggs are blue. 
The Oxylophus edolius, or Black-and-white-crested Cuckoo^, 
deposits its greenish-blue egg in the nest of this bird by pre- 
ference"^/^ 
Pre-eminent among song-birds is the "Mocking-bird^^ 
of the United States and the West Indian Islands. He is 
a plain bird, so much so as perhaps to be one of the last 
in an aviary to arrest attention, were it not for his imita- 
tive powers, which soon attract notice to their utterer. The 
American Ornithologist has described his powers with his 
far-famed pen. He tells us : " He many times deceives the 
sportsman, and sends him in search of birds that perhaps 
are not within miles of him, bat whose notes he exactly imi- 
tates ; even birds themselves are frequently imposed on by 
this admirable mimic, and are decoyed by the fancied calls 
of their mates, or dive with precipitation into the depths of 
thickets at the scream of what they suppose to be the spar- 
row-hawkf." 
"We have only once heard the mocking-bird. The speci- 
* Jerdou, Illustrations of Indian Ornithology, pi. xix. 
t American Ornithology, by Alexander Wilson (Prof. Jar^eson's edition), 
vol. ii. p. 93. 
